Huaraz is a lovely little town located high in the Andes on the edge of the Cordillera Blanca, which is a beautiful mountain range where many people come to do treks. The highest mountain in Peru, Huascaran can be seen from Huaraz on a clear day, and the area is gorgeous.
I caught up with my American friend Adam who I met in Montañita and we decided to go on a trek for the day. After visiting the very helpful tourist office, we set off on a recommended hike to Laguna Churup. Only 3 hours up and a few down, and it's very tranquil we were...

Arrived in Huaraz in the middle of a rain storm and we were immediately bugged by touts trying to sell their hostel - it was more aggressive than we've had before and it took some firm words to get them to leave us alone. Eventually flagged down a taxi to take us to a hostel recommended in the lonely planet. When we reached it we were more than pleasantly surprised, it was just like a Swiss hotel you imagine in the Alps, each floor has its own sitting area, downstairs was a TV lounge and the top floor was an open plan lounge kitchen area...

It was hard to leave from Huancahco, It's amazing how comfortable I got there, made quite a few local friends, before I left I went around town saying addios to my amigos and they all asked me when will I return, and I thought probably never, but did not want to accept that. Anyways I said my goodbyes and exchanged email addresses, hopefully some day I will go there again. When I was leaving Huaraz I heard a familiar song playing at a music stall, check out the video to hear it.
The bus ride from Huancahco to Huaraz was a breeze, slept...

Well, we arrived in Huarez (right near Cordelerro Blanco National Reserve) in the evening and Christine was not feeling well. We were sad that we might not get to enjoy our day in the national park, but in the end she was ok.
Unfortunately the weather was not great and the spectacular views that we expected were moderate at best. As I mentioned in the last post, the people here are all out to gouge you and it's starting to make us grumpy. Our bus driver on our tour of the national park kept stopping everywhere (where he gets a commission)...

Crystal - We decided we had time to briefly head North. Destination, Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca in the Peruvian Andes. The bus journey takes us from the Coast of Lima over the 4080 metre Conococha pass before heading back down 1000m into the town of Huaraz.
The altitude hits us pretty quickly, walking and talking can no longer be done together and the lovely feeling that your brain may explode takes over. So as you do when ajusting to the altitude, we book ourselves in for a Mountain bike the next day up in the Cordillera Negra....

Today was really nothing more than a business day, a chance to get my nasty laundry done from the trek, and see some of this beautiful mountain town, all while killing time and relaxing before my first overnight bus ride of the trip. In addition to Matt, Andy and I, the girls that are each travelling solo whom we met up on Punta Union Pass were also staying in the same hostel, small world.
Huaraz is set at an altitude over 3,000m (maybe 10,000ft), and is the prinicpal town in this region of the Andes known as the Cordillera Blanca. It gets...

Well if I've had some bad luck with bus travels so far, today was my day of all the close calls working out in my favor.
I woke up at 5am in Huanchaco for a 6am bus in Trujillo. It took me abit to get ready, so I only got out to the road around 5:30, and there are no taxis so I had to take a bus into Trujillo, which usually takes a full 30 minutes. So on the way I'm talking with driver and ask him to pull over once we get into town if he sees a taxi. I don't expect anything to come of this, but he does just that as we wenter Trujillo, so I...

To Huaraz, an 8 hour bus ride, through the coastal desert along a road scratched out beneath enormous sand dunes that look as if they could collapse down on the bus at any moment. Winding ever upwards into the Andes, where pale London faces fry like peppers in the sun.
Speaking of peppers, the largest are not necessarily the least hot and when stir-fried are liable to cause the evacuation of the hostel common room. That's not to mention what they do to your insides. The clue is when the Quechua woman in the market place laughs hysterically...

We returned to altitude in the amazing Cordillera Blanca, a lofty range in the central Peruvian Andes, famous for its world class hiking and adventure sports, home to the greatest concentration of glaciers in the tropics... We didn't realise there was ice in the tropics at all?
After a hectic couple of days getting here we decided to let some ponies do the hiking and opted for a trail ride up one of the many valleys here.
We originally signed up for a relatively short four hour ride (thought we'd ease ourselves back into the saddle),...